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Anyone else feel like Google maps reviews (and most other online review systems) have become totally worthless the last few years? It seems like every single place has overwhelmingly 5 star reviews, no matter how bad it is. I can't tell if it's bots, paid reviewers, or just a weird culture where people think they're "being nice" by leaving a 5 star review. Either way, i no longer trust them at all.
The star system is broken, and nothing can fix it.
For one thing, no one can agree what the scale even means in the first place. Reviewers will write "Wonderful, quaint little burger truck by the beach. Best I've ever had. 2/5 stars", because they think there's some objective restaurant ranking ranging from broken vending machine to Michelin, and a particularly good burger truck sits at ~2/5 on that scale, so it gets a glowing review and 2 stars. I think this derives from hotel ratings, where there was a defined meaning for what each star meant.
Do restaurants work like hotels? no idea. Personally, I'm inclined to rate things by what they're trying to do, so a perfect food truck gets 5 stars, and a slightly flawed upscale place gets 4. But then, do prices matter? If the burger truck has great food, but overpriced, to they get docked stars? Is the rating scale linear or logarithmic?
And then there's the 5 star/1 star problem. Everyone knows the average rating is important, so they rate to affect the average. If you like the place, you want to give them as much of an advantage on the algorithm as you can, whether they bribed you for that rating or not. You are being nice by leaving a 5 star review. Meanwhile, haters give a mean-spirited 1 star no matter what the actual quality because it's going to hurt the place more that way.
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